Word Out 2014

Black Ice by Becca Fitzpatrick

Reviewed by Fari

Britt Pfeiffer (Bonus points for being able to pronounce her last name! :D) knows how she’s spending her senior Spring Break; backpacking. Along with her best friend, Korbie, and Korbie’s boyfriend, Bear, she was going to backpack the Teton Range and she had spent the year training for it. But, of course, life decided to have a little fun and dragged Britt’s ex-boyfriend, who also happens to be Korbie’s older brother, into the mix when she’d finally been having some success moving on after eight months. Now she has to spend another week with him while Korbie and Bear will be no help at all.

However, nothing goes according to plans as, while Britt and Korbie are driving to Korbie’s family’s cabin in the mountains, an unexpected snowstorm drives them to seek shelter in the nearest cabin… which has already been occupied by two men. It’s not long before they discover that these two guys are actually criminals on the run from the police and Britt is forced to lead them out of the mountains for it is that or face death.

Suddenly, clues are discovered about the girls who’d been murdered on the mountains this past year and Britt gets closer and closer to discovering the truth. Also, she’s not quite sure why one of her captors, Mason, is being so nice and looking out for her. What’s he hiding? Because in these mountains, everybody has a secret.

When I went into this book, I hardly had any expectations because I had heard some pretty negative things about Fitzpatrick’s Hush, Hush saga and wasn’t sure if this book would be the same. However, I was unexpectedly delighted by this book. It was pretty fast-paced, the occasional funny lines (including laughing at Britt) and a definite page-turner. The suspense had me at the edge of my seat!

I usually don’t show much interest in murder-mysteries, especially if it doesn’t involve some sort of mythical creature, but when I picked this up, I couldn’t put it down! On the rare occasion that the my mom made me stop reading to do something more “useful”, my mind would still be between those pages, wondering, hoping, curious and guessing. It was an awesome read!

Let’s now talk about the main character, shall we? At the beginning of the book, Britt was a spoiled rotten, self-centred brat. She was extremely annoying and I just wanted to hit her with the book for being so whiny, weak and just pathetic! She wants to backpack in the mountains, for goodness’ sakes! She won’t last a day if she doesn’t stop being so needy, expecting everyone to protect and do everything for her! However, gradually, as the book goes on and Britt survives more, she finally starts to use her brain and she becomes stronger and is able to stand on her own two feet. So, there was actually good character development there.  

 PLOT TWIST! I’ve always been a sucker for plot twists and in my opinion, this book has an epic plot twist-ish kind of thing! In the middle of the book, I didn’t even know what was going to happen because the direction it was taking was… gone and now there’s the plot but… I can’t say much without spoiling everything… I thought it was going in one direction but then, just like that, it took a 180 and I was left feeling a little lost. The second half is definitely the better half with more action, suspense and guessing games as well as very many surprises! The end was not at all like I’d expected it to be. At first I’d thought that I had the answer but then after that’s eliminated, the real answer creeps up on you slowly but surely and you realize what’s happening two pages before Britt and it’s so good!

Bit of a warning but there are some sexist situations and comments closer to the end of the book. It gets all sorted out at the end but… Just thought to mention.

Black Ice is going to be released on October 7, 2014. In a way, it’s a good thing that the book is going to be released in October, when winter starts to show. This is definitely not a summer-y read, even if I did read it in summer! Becca Fitzpatrick also wrote the Hush, Hush saga, containing the four books Hush, Hush, Crescendo, Silence, and Finale. I have not yet read the saga, because I have heard VERY mixed things about it, though I am considering giving it a try since I liked this book…